Fantasy Fiction and Fantasy Roleplaying Games

I love fantasy literature and I love roleplaying games.

For me this started early. When I was in first grade my father read Lord of the Rings to me. Because he worked all the time, and I wanted to read it over that summer, I read it myself, basically learning to properly read so I could read that book series without my father having to read it to me. A couple years later, the Ralph Bakshi film came out, and around the same time, I played Dungeons and Dragons for the first time.

Since then there have been many different games and many different fantasy series, but one thing I’ve noticed about the fantasy books I really enjoy the most, I always start to think about how the characters and settings would work in roleplaying games. It’s tempting to want to play as those characters in games, and it’s interesting how games in turn inform fantasy literature.

For many people Dungeons and Dragons is the default fantasy RPG, but I have played many different games. Some of them were tailored for an existing fantasy fiction world. Iron Crown Enterprises used their Rolemaster system to create a Middle Earth Roleplaying System, which to this day had the best supplements of any game I’ve seen. For D&D it was reversed. Dark Sun, Dragonlance, and Forgotten Realms are just some of the novels set in official D&D settings.

But I think for books that don’t have an official RPG I’d hesitate to use D&D. All rule systems are different. Some games suit stories of certain types better than others. For instance, I’d think that the Joe Abercrombie books would be well suited for Rolemaster. The books’ visceral combat and random elements would work brilliantly with Rolemaster’s critical tables. I assume Game of Thrones has an official RPG, and I just haven’t seen it, but I’d also think that Savage Worlds with its simplicity of rules would help the players to avoid the minutiae of controlling their character in combat and let them focus on what matters most: drinking wine and snappy dialogue.

I also find it useful as a writer to use RPGs to help round out my own characters. For instance, in my unpublished espionage-scifi, I filled in a character sheet for the Expanse RPG for every single character before I started outlining, let alone writing.

What got me thinking about this was that I just finished reading Pete Aldin’s Last Among Equals (I was lucky enough to get a hardback copy as a backer award), and as I read I was so enraptured by the setting and characters that I immediately started to think of how much fun they would be to play in an RPG.

With its focus on tactics and heroic roleplaying, I think newly published Draw Steel is perfectly suited for Last Among Equals.

Last Among Equals has a fairly simple map. There are two distinct kingdoms with a long history of enmity. This should work well for either an introductory campaign or could be connected to the Timescape of Draw Steel. There are only humans and monsters specifically mentioned in LAE, but it would be easy enough to incorporate the other ancestries of Draw Steel, particularly Polder (who appear similar enough to smaller humans), and I think the Revenants (undead, or “living impaired”) would fit easily in that world.

The Trell, the monsters of Last Among Equals should be pretty simple to make as Draw Steel monsters as there is plenty of variety within the the Trell as there are with many of the groups of monsters in Draw Steel. The Trell have spell casters, Chanters. They have plenty of minions which will give the players the cathartic release of victory over so many enemies.

My favorite Last Among Equals characters are pretty straightforward for converting to Draw Steel:

Prej: Conduit

Erik: Tactician

Freya: Shadow

Uli: Fury

I thought for a bit whether Prej makes more sense as an Elementalist or as a Conduit, but the latter seems to fit better. The magic she wields is mostly some other power working through her, and her healing abilities in the first place shout Conduit. Piety and some of the powers she works don’t translate as directly, but the Draw Steel Conduit abilities have a feel that they’re the sort of things she’d wield, which I think is more important for adapting fiction to an RPG. She has the Mage’s Apprentice Draw Steel career right there from the word go.

Erik is the most capable in combat, but his true prowess seems to be in encouraging the people around him. Thus a the Tactician class suits him best. He’d likely have a a Noble House Culture, but it being a fallen house would work as a Complication. He is a Soldier and gets the benefits of that Career as a Draw Steel character. I think his Tactical Doctrine would be Vanguard, but I could also see going with Mastermind, I just think his force of personality outweighs his knowledge of past battles, so I’m sticking with Vanguard.  His Sword and Board Kit includes his named sword.

Freya was a little bit of a stretch. In Draw Steel, Shadows are a lot more magical than D&D Rogues, and Freya is almost more of an early edition D&D Thief… but I think the College of Caustic Alchemy would suite Frey well. It’s not difficult for me to imagine her making use of the College’s potions. Her career is a Criminal, even fits nicely into the Quick Build: with Criminal Underworld, Pick Lock, and Pick Pocket for skills, and a Criminal Contacts Perk. The Quick Build choice of a Cloak and Dagger Kit would also suit her to a tee.

Uli was the toughest to pick. He’s a capable fighter, but part of the tension of the book is that he’s not a leader but can’t help getting put into leadership roles because of his noble status. He’s not particularly dogmatic or ideological, so that’s the Censor out. He uses weapons and armor so he’s not a Null. I figured Fury works best, though clearly not a Stormwight as he’s not a shape changer. This leaves either the Berserker or Reaver. The Reaver is described as having “primordial cunning,” and I don’t think Uli is all that cunning. But he does unleash rage in combat, so I’m going with Berserker.

It’s easy to see the other classes of Draw Steel fitting into this world. The Summoner and his minions would be doing much of what the Trell Chanters seem to do.

I expect that playing these characters, or playing new characters in this world, will be as much fun as I had reading the story and writing this post.

Draw Steel is available now as a PDF from MCDM, or the print books can be preordered here.

Last Among Equals can be purchased at Barnes and Noble, Books-A-Million (Australia), Bookshop (US), and Amazon.